Trinity Sunday - created, saved, empowered

Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday, it’s a special day but unusual because today we don’t celebrate the life of a Saint or a particular event but we celebrate a belief, or put more technically, a doctrine… 

And with those words I can almost hear the sound of people dropping off to sleep, but I hope you won’t because the Trinity is all about life and energy and love, it’s about creation and power and salvation…. And it’s about you and me and how we enjoy a relationship with God… 

The doctrine of the Trinity – God, three persons yet one God, is a confusing one but our lack of understanding doesn’t lessen the importance. St Augustine wrote as far back as the 4th century that any God who we can understand is not God… 

In the most simple of terms of course God the Father is the creator of the world, God the Son is the person we know as Jesus, who came into the world to save us from sin and to offer a direct route back to God, and God the Holy Spirit is the person who helps us from within – the Holy Spirit is God acting in us to help us be more like him and to do his work more effectively. 

And the recognition of God as those three persons and yet one God is hugely important as we seek to build a relationship with Him, and also as we prepare to share his message with others. 

God is confusing and all of us will at times, I’m sure, seek answers which just don’t seem to come, but too often there is a danger that we use that as an excuse not to dig deeper, and not to seek to grow closer to God – but in the Trinity God comes close to us at every moment of our lives… 

The work of God the Father in creation is all around us. It’s so easy to take for granted the beauty of creation, but forget the intricacies of it – who could imagine that from nothing beautiful flowers could grow, that grass could cover hillsides, who could imagine the rugged mountains and the beautiful seas and rivers, who could imagine a world created from nothing that could look like ours ? 

Except that it was drawn and made by the supreme artist that is God the Father who created the world and all that is in it, and he left us a responsibility to recognise it, to thank him for it, to care for it and to use it for the benefit of all…. 

God the Son is perhaps the most easy part of the Trinity that we can relate to because in Jesus we see a person – a person living in a different time and place to us, but a person who still faced life with all of its ups and downs… We can look at Jesus and see the care he took of people all around him, we can look at the way he showed compassion on those who needed it most, the way he treated those who were greedy or corrupt, the way he trusted that his work was work that had to be done, and that there was nothing that would get in the way of it – even the pain of death on the cross…

As we look at Jesus we must always recognise that we are called to be Jesus to others –we are called to live out his life, to care as he cared, to share a message of hope just as he did with everyone – he didn’t withhold his message from those who abused him, he didn’t ignore those who ignored him, he didn’t criticise those who fell below the standards he thought were right – he saw people, and he offered them an invitation that could change their lives forever… 

And then there is God the Holy Spirit – the power within us today to accomplish the work of God. The Holy Spirit is our inspiration, the Holy Spirit is the power that enables us to know that, in all things, God is always ultimately, in control, and that he can use us to do his work… 

The transforming power that led Peter out to preach at Pentecost, or Paul to undertake his missionary journeys is still power that is around today, and it is a power that wants to grab each one of us, and invite us to go further on a journey that is the most incredible one that we can ever take – a journey with God… 

In the Old Testament Reading we heard the call of Isaiah (6:1-8) as we have the incredible story of how he heard the call of God – ‘Whom shall I send and who will go for us ?’ Isaiah responded, ‘Here am I, send me…’ 

We will be called in different ways for different roles, but the one role to which we are all invited is to accept and follow Jesus in our lives – and to know that through the power of the Holy Spirit our lives will be transformed continually…. The Lord calls each one of us into his service in different ways and different places, but he calls us all and may we always respond with those incredible words of faith, ‘Here am I, send me’…

And that’s important for Trinity Sunday because in the Trinity we are reminded that we are created by God, created for a purpose, created for life, real life not just created into being. And that life is to be shared with God who loves us… And as part of that relationship we’re reminded in our other readings that God didn’t send Jesus into the world to condemn people but in order that the world might be saved through him (John 3:17)…. 

People often think of the church as judgemental and perhaps relate that to an idea that God is a God of condemnation, but God is quite the opposite – time and time again he has seen his people rebel against him and yet, time and time again he has called us back and welcomed us with open arms…. ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life… Indeed God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.’ 

And that love is further emphasised in the reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:12-17) where it is made clear that when God receives us into his family, we’re not just received in as household servants but as his children, as heirs of all he has, ‘joint heirs with Christ…’

Today on this Trinity Sunday we thank God for the wonders of his creation, including ourselves, and we look at the people next to us and just remember, they are part of God’s creation too, just as the person sleeping on the street that we might walk past later is a part of that creation too…. And we have a duty to one another because of that… 

So we thank God for creation, and we thank God for the salvation offered for us all through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, who just came and exemplified what real love is about; and we thank God for the fact that he doesn’t leave us to try and cope with life on our own but offers us the incredible power of the Holy Spirit to fill us and strengthen us and empower us to live as children of God… 

This week there has been a lot of publicity about the Church in Wales setting up a fund of £10 million for evangelism – in other words a fund set up for the sole purpose of telling people about Jesus in words or in actions…. 

Some have suggested that it’s a lot of money and that it could have been better spent on something else like caring for the poor for example, but to think that is a massive failure in understanding what evangelism is about… 

Evangelism is about sharing good news – there is no better gift that someone can receive than to know a relationship with God – God who created us, who loves us, who calls us back to him even when we’ve messed things up pretty badly at times, who knows what we’re doing moment by moment and who even provides the help of the Holy Spirit to strengthen and empower us…. 

Evangelism comes in all kinds of different forms – recently the great American evangelist Billy Graham died. Some didn’t like his style, but for me he was a great influence… His great rallies were a style of evangelism, but many others will do evangelism quietly in different ways, maybe into one to one discussions, maybe in caring for someone who is struggling… 

Last week at the Deanery Conference we had a talk about Christians Against Poverty, a group committed to helping people who are struggling financially – they don’t just help Christians or people who they want to convert, they help anyone, but sometimes that help will lead people to ask why they’re doing it and they can tell them that they’re doing it because Jesus loves them and loves the person or family they’re helping too – it’s a very simple but very powerful message of good news…. 

God created us, God loves us, God wants to fill us with his Spirit to do his work and live life to the full… Telling people the good news of Jesus is essential, and knowing that good news for ourselves is also essential… 

On this Trinity Sunday as we recognise the wonder of creation, let us seek out the gift of God’s Spirit constantly that our lives may be changed and empowered to tell people about the love of Jesus and the offer of salvation he gives to all…. AMEN